Dead hard drive after one 1/2 years

My ibook G4 stopped reading discs about 4 months ago, when the computer was about 9 months old. I was unable to bring in for help until recently, thinking it was not a huge deal. Now the computer at 1 1/2 years old, has a dead hard drive. Because I couldn't back up, I have to get data retrieval and a new hard drive. Because the lame warranty is up, I have to pay $600 dollars to essentially fix a brand new computer. Upset is not the word. It seems quite neglible that a company can make a $2000 item that starts dying essentially after 6 months of use.
The computer was used to write papers and do bookkeeping, this was not an abusive over use.
Any opinions out there? Is this "normal?"
I couldn't bring the computer in, due to a loss in my family, and school, etc...had I known it was much more than a virus, surely I would have! The lesson of a back up is also lost...because I was unable to back up, that is why I brought the computer in.....the day before I went for maintanence, ironically the computer wouldn't start.....

I am sorry to hear that you've had such a bad experience. We all have life situations that make it difficult for us to make things happen sometimes. It's all about your priorities. Obviously the problems on your computer were not important enough at the time to pay attention to. AppleCare was available to you within your first year which would have extended your warranty.
All electronic products generally come with a one year warranty. If your TV goes buggy within it's first year you would probably bring it in for repair. Afterwards it's your responsibility to repair or replace.
Again sorry to hear you've had such a bad experience but I don't know that their's much you can do aside from making sure you let Apple know. It seems to be a common occurance on these boards and if there is a growing trend to failing HD maybe Apple will do something.

Similar Messages

Dead Hard Drive on Black MacBook

Can any one give any pointers as to how to replace a dead hard drive in a (approximately) two year old Black MacBook? Service guy trying to charge me £250+ to do it.
Any help would be most appreciated.

It's super easy.
Go here and buy this HHD (I have bought 3 of them for my Mac laptops)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314
Go here for simple instruction on installing it.
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/macbook13_memhd/
One thing to remember is to re-format the HHD once installed using your install Disk #1. Reformat using GUID. Very simple to do. Can be installed in less than 10 minutes with the right tools (highly recommend buying the from OWC), and another few hours to reinstall everything.
Right tools from here.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/TOOLKIT11/
Message was edited by: D/FW

How do I get finder to recognize my hard drive after pulling my hard drive out without eject...? Is my hard drive dead? I see it in disk utility... Can I get my info back?

I have a seagte back up plus. I pulled my hard drive out without ejecting it and now finder dosn't find it but I see it in disk utility (although I cant repair permissions) How do I get finder to recognize my hard drive after pulling my hard drive out without eject...? Is my hard drive dead? I see it in disk utility... Can I get my info back?
Thank you so much for any help

In Disk Utility you need to see a volume or partition in addition to the drive.
If all you see is the drive, then when you ejected it you proably corrupted the volume or partition on the drive.
If that is true then your chances of getting anything back are slim at best.
About the only thing I know that might work not is to send the disk out to a service for recovery. This is going to cost like $$$$.
Is the data worth that much?
Allan

Can't install OS X after replacing dead hard drive

Hello-
Today I replaced the dead hard drive (Genius bar-confirmed) on my MacBook.
The replacement itself was uneventful.
When I tried to load OS X, I reached the page that asks me which language I want, but that was as far as I could go. I received a warning: "ALERT--this software can't be installed on this computer". I backed out and went into Disk Utility, and YES--it recognized the new hard drive (although there was a line somewhere about "unformatted"). The new drive is a SATA 2.5" Fujitsu 7200 rpm drive. The Genius Bar guy said to definitely get a SATA 2.5".
Any suggestions, please?
Much appreciated.
THANK YOU.

Well. I've checked out all the Fujitsu drive reports here and see no problems...
http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/action.lasso?-search
On the off chance, have you tried a PRAM Reset or whatever passes for a PMU Reset these days?

Can I transfer Time Machine data from two separate hard drives into one new one?

I'm using a MacBook Pro as my primary computer. My 500 gig Time Capsule filled up a year or so ago, so I stopped using it with Time Machine for awhile so I could keep the data from those old back-ups. There were a number of things I deleted from my computer's very limited hard drive after they were backed up to the Time Capsule. I got a 1T external USB drive last year to use as my "filing Cabinet" to store files I didn't necessarily need all the time or that were filling up my small laptop hard drive--including my iTunes library--all organized in a way that made it relatively easy for me to find what I needed, even if I didn't remember exactly when I'd filed it or what I'd called it. I got another 1 terabyte external (portable) drive last July and dedicated it to TimeMachine backups and labeled it "TimeMachine".
Over the last couple of weeks, my friend has been helping me upgrade to Yosemite and clean up my laptop hard drive. Last week he cloned my laptop hard drive to a new 1T hard drive and I exchanged it for my old drive in my computer today. All good.
Here's the issue. We replaced my Time Capsule hard drive with a 1 terabyte drive with the idea of transferring the data from the old Time Capsule (500G) drive and the newer USB 1T "TimeMachine" compact drive to the new 1T Time Capsule drive and beginning using the latter for my Time Machine backups going forward. Originally he thought we could copy everything from each of my external drives (the old 500gig drive from my Time Capsule, the USB "TimeMachine" drive I've been using since July, and the "file cabinet" files) to my computer in their own folders and then start regular TimeMachine backups to the new Time Capsule drive, thus preserving all my old data and making regular backups going forward. The "file cabinet" data was no problem at all, but when I tried to copy my USB "TimeMachine" data to my computer, I was unable to. My friend found instructions for transferring old TimeMachine data to a new TimeCapsule, but I don't know if I can transfer the data from two separate disks to the new TimeCapsule drive. I'm afraid that one set of data will supersede the other and either my newer backups or my old ones will be lost if I try to transfer both.
Are my fears justified or is there a way to insure that no such problem will occur? Of course, my data will still be on those two older drives, but that won't do me a lot of good if I can't access it when I need to. Also, the 1T drive now belongs to my friend; he used a brand new drive he'd bought for himself for my new internal hard drive and plans to take my 1T "TimeCapsule" drive in exchange, once the data has been transferred, so he will, of course, erase that drive.

Should we be able to bring up the old (500G) Time Capsule Drive to rename it using a SATA to FireWire harness and then copy the whole thing to the new Time Capsule drive?
You can copy a whole sparsebundle from one drive to another. That is not a problem. Whether you can access the sparsebundle is something you should test before you even start though.
If it's on the Desktop and I don't tell Time Machine to exclude it from backups, will it just automatically back it up?
All drives you plug into the Mac are excluded by default.. you must include them. So no problems there.. but I hope I am understanding the question.
Will both volumes or directories (which is the right term?) show up when I open Time Machine?
No, Time Machine will only open what it is told to open... or its backup default location.
You can force Time Machine to open alternative/old/no longer used backups by (now I have a problem as things have changed somewhat in Yosemite and I consider it alpha release software at this point in time). The old method was to right click on the TM icon and select a different TM backup. easy. Yosemite seems to have made easy stuff harder.
Here it is on my current computer.. clearly not Yosemite.. Right click on the TM icon in the dock.. select Browse Other Time Machine Disks.. And supply the info of where that is located. Easy. If you cannot figure it out one of the other posters here (with more patience than me for Yosemite) will help you.
Or will we have to partition the new drive somehow--is that even possible?
I am getting more lost as I go down the list.. but the TC disk cannot be partitioned.
If you have included all those USB drives in the new backup on a Time a Time Capsule.. you have made life rather hard because now your files are stored another layer deeper than they were.
So to open a file from a disk you need to open the sparsebundle.. then dig down to the drive in question and then dig down to the backup.. and all of this means Time Machine has to work perfectly which is Yosemite is a very big ask.
I thought you wanted to just backup your old drives to central location.. which means copying the files to a separate folder on the Time Capsule.
One correction I need to make to my post, which will make my strategy make a bit more sense: my new Time Capsule drive is 4T
It makes it much harder.. and I have to pose a real question of long term .. if you have put a 4TB drive in a Gen1 TC.. did you also replace its power supply because I can assure you the drive might be ok but the TC itself will not last forever.. and what happens when it dies. The Gen1 power supply is already well beyond its normal life span and the vast majority are dead. When the backup device is unreliable and the backups on it are made that much harder to get access to.. is this a great plan??
If you are going to consolidate all your old files on one disk.. a task I find understandable. I have done much the same albeit the usefulness of files made on emac running OS9 may be questioned. A disk lying in the bottom of a draw is a more appropriate place for them.
You want those files as easily accessible as possible (at the point of recovery) and not buried inside a sparsebundle.. particularly not a sparsebundle from the old TC disk buried inside a new sparsebundle.. keep files as accessible as possible as you can run searches.. and that is best done on a USB 3 (or faster ie thunderbolt) drive plugged into a new(ish) computer.. not network. And since the files are not being accessed on a daily/weekly or even monthly or yearly basis.. keeping them in actively running TC network storage.. I would say is a waste of space. That is only my opinion of course.. you might consider it highly important that files you will never look at are available any time of day or night when the urge comes to track down that elusive pimpernel email you sent 10 years ago... but I find it hard to justify. What the case.. the problem with TM and things like Mail is you cannot search it.. you must restore the whole library/files/program even before you can access it.. that makes file recovery out of a sparsebundle double step process.
So.. summary.
If you want to store files on the 4TB drive in the TC.. that is not a great strategy but it can work.. simply create a folder named.. OldFilesEMac for instance.. and do a simple copy and paste of all the file to that location. Do not use TM.. Since you have already used TM.. and from what I am reading you have already done the backup with the external drives included.. then you are going to end up needing to erase the TC and start over.. which you may not be prepared to do.. which is fair enough. (I am coming across as overbearing school master.. apologies).
TM is to backup your main OS and current files.. not files from 10-20years ago.
Please do read the issues involved in Pondini..
See his FAQ. I recommend you read through Q14-17 so you understand what is involved in recovery.
http://pondini.org/TM/FAQ.html
I also recommend you read the first couple of articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Home.html
Particularly so you understand the complexity of Time Machine.
And the articles here. http://pondini.org/TM/Time_Capsule.html
Particularly Q3 on mixing data and backups on a TC.
I wish I could spend an hour or two face to face and work it out.. the whole strategy to do this.. !!

What is the proceedure for replacing a hard drive (after failure) for RAID 5 with IX4-300D?

I have the IX4-300D with 4 hard drives (identical Seagate drives) using RAID 5.
Someday a hard drive will fail and I and I have to replace it. I read through the users manual briefly and I didn't see any documentation on how to perform a hard drive replacement and not lose any data.
So here are my questions:
1) I know per the instructions that Lenovo prefers using identical hard drives. Let's say in 2 years, 1 hard drive fails. Most likely, the same model Seagate hard drive will not be available. So will using a replacement hard drive by the same manufacturer with similar specifications work?
2) Will the front panel (or the software) tell me which hard drive has failed?
3) What is the proceedure for replacing a hard drive after a failure occurs? I read that the IX4-300D is not hot-swappable. So do I just power the IX4-300D down, replace the hard drive, and turn it back on?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Hi exceptionalht,
It is best to replace the hard drive with one that is the same manufacturer, rotational speed, and capacity, so it does not have to be exactly the same model.
The front panel should show which drive has failed. If not you can check the web interface to find out.
That is the basic procedure for replacing a hard drive. You can see a more detailed instructions here: Installing hard drives in an ix4-300d
Have questions and need answers?
Search the database for answers to FAQ's, software/driver downloads, tutorials, news, features and more!
LenovoEMC Support & Downloads
LenovoEMC North America Support Contact Page

T43 - Recovery from dead hard drive

I have a T43 (2686-DJU) with hard drive failure (noticed for the first time with an error message on start-up saying "media test failure, check cable ... operating system not found". After discussion with the Lenovo support folks they confirmed the hard drive needed replacement, and I have ordered a new one (part 13N6917) - I am wondering how I go about getting the new one up and running as well as rescue and recovery since I was not smart enough to make a rescue CD. Should I order one? Is there some way to pull recovery info off of my mostly dead hard drive?
I apoligize for what I presume are pretty basic questions - maybe someone can just point me to a resource that I have simply not found yet.
Many thanks.
mjeastman

My hard drive failed completely and the Apple Store offered to "try" to recover it for $2000+. I went to a company called ProSoft http://www.prosofteng.com/ and they were very helpful. They sold me some software for around $100 to recover all of the data. It took over a week for the software to run correctly, but I got EVERYTHING back and ProSoft was so helpful with all of my questions.
Good Luck

Mac Pro 2008 Not Recognizing SATA Hard Drives After Power Failure...

So we recently had a weird power "outage" where the power still seemed to be surging some (my monitor was blinking wouldn't turn completely off until I yanked the plug on it), and to my dismay, when the power came back on, I started having boot issues with my Mac. Luckily I had a couple of identical dual-quad core machines sitting around (workgroup environment), swapped my hard drive into one of them, and was back in business on-the-fly.
However, I'm now trying to troubleshoot the faulty machine (qihout throwing parts at it yet) and am stuck at an impasse. With the hard drive of the secondary machine cross-installed into the one that got "hit" by the outage, I simply got the chime and then it stuck on the dreaded gray screen, and out of all the boot options, the only one that would get me a different result was to try to option-boot into the Startup Manager, which would still give me the gray screen but also a mouse cursor after about a minute. Zapped PRAM... reset SMU... even swapped CMOS battery... all to no avail.
So I started yanking things. Memory.. video card... and finally the one and only (swapped) hard drive. The last one did it, and I was finally able to option-boot, start up from the Installation CD, and ultimately, D-boot into the hardware tests on the CD. Ran both normal and extended tests and everything checked out fine, with no errors (and based on the potetnial error messgaes I read about, these tests check everything from the logic board to the power supply, and voltage across both).
Now I'm torn and not sure which route to go from here. Machine seems to operate relatively normally when booting from CD... all hardware tests pass... Super Drive works (not sure it that's SATA or PATA, but guessing the latter at this point)... it just won't take a hard drive (which I verified is fine in another computer), regardless of which of the 4 bays I put it in. I'm also hard presed to believe that the power outage/surges caused the SATA cable(s) to go bad yet nothing else, which still have me leaning towards SATA controller on the board or a power supply issue despite the fact the tests passed.
Thoughts, opinions, or comments... from experience or otherwise? Thanks in advance!

Look hatter. I'm not saying it doesn't, but "prevention" is not why I started the thread. It was to troubleshoot the already existing problem, and you suggesting I run out and drop a combined $1000 on UPS units for each of the five 2008 Mac Pros I still have in my department is neither contributory to the thread topic nor cost-effective just to (possibly) prevent another (what seems to now be) $10 cable issue yet another 6 years down the road. Thanks, though. :/
Well it wasn't the power supply, nor apparently the SATA controller (I don't believe at this point). I finally got the hard drive to recognize and boot again, but ended up having to use one of the two extra SATA connector ports on the board (which I can only assume are handled by the onboard SATA controller as well) and a 4-pin molex to SATA power adapter connected to the power output for the secondary optical drive. As such, It very well may just be the "Hard Drive Harness Cable", although I need to order a male to female SATA extension cable so I can hook the drive up directly to the data side of that the drive bay connectors to determine whether it's the data side or the power side causing issues. I'm again assuming power, since the extra SATA ports seem to work, I'm pretty sure the drive isn't spinning up fully, yet the bays obviously 'recognize' there's a drive in there (thus the gray screen when one is plugged in).
Anyway - I'll update when I get to that point, primarily for posterity's sake, as I found several "unresolved" gray screen threads on the web (and even in these forums) that sounded just like mine yet offered little ultimate help. In the meantime, does anyone want to speculate on whether it's the cable itself or maybe the SATA chain power plug on the board could be bad? It looks to be pretty close to the main power input connector on the board, so just wondering if (worst case scenario) something could have popped on the board between the two? Seems unlikely, but...
Either way, I can always work around it all if necessary by utilizing the same setup I got it to boot with.

Growling Powerbook - dead hard drive?

Hope someone can help with this. Basically about six months ago the PB started growling intermittently, and was stopped simply by tilting the PB slightly. Then for ages it didn't do it at all, and put it down to 'one of those things'.
In the last couple of weeks or so it started again, and today pretty much stopped being intermittent and became permanent bar for getting the machine in some ludicrous upside down position, and even then only for seconds - so basically is currently unusable.
When it growls, the beachball spins, and nothing responds.
My best guess is that it's a dead or dying hard drive - it's about 3.5 yrs old, and has been used exhaustively on a daily basis - so I can accept that it's wear and tear.
Fortunately I've been making regular back ups suspecting that this day was on it's way.
I guess I'm just trying to suss out now if it is most likely to be the hard drive, rather than, say, the board?
It's an 80GB HD, with 1GB RAM, and around 20gigs free.
Any pointers on this appreciated.

You may be able to find a local computer shop that'd be willing to take a stab at doing the repairs, or you could ask Apple itself for an estimate of what they're likely to charge for that kind of thing.
I would definitely study the instructions carefully before attempting to replace the hard drive in a laptop for yourself. The RAM is designed to be easily accessed/removed/replaced by a user for the powerbook, but the hard drive isn't. That doesn't mean that it's impossible to reach it, just that there's going to be more finesse involved. Find a guide that has pictures, preferably, so you can have a real sense of what you'll be getting into and whether you feel comfortable that you can do it, or if you'd feel safer paying more for someone else to.
I can't say that I've ever replaced the hard drive in my powerbook, but typically hard drives are one of the easiest parts to swap in and out on a computer, because their behavior in relation to the rest of the computer is very well standardized (in contrast to say... graphics cards, which need special drivers and still may not work properly after they've gotten them).
Typically, you can just swap the other hard drive into the system, attach the cords, insert the install CD, and away you go.
What I would suggest first, however, is that you see whether your computer can be coaxed into booting off of a "LiveCD". There are several operating systems (versions of Linux and BSD especially) where you can boot and run the entire system off of the CD or DVD rather than the installed system on the hard drive. (Often this is used to either repair a system or to test for hardware compatibility). At the very least, if the boot process can run from a liveCD all right, that'll be an indication that the other components in your laptop are still working properly.

Problems reading my backed up data on hard drive after using Time Machine

I have a MacBookPro and had to take it in for servicing. I backed up all my data using Time machine. They had to replace my battery, hard drive, and logic board, basically wiping my slate clean. When I got my computer back and plugged in my hard drive time machine came up asking if I wanted to restore a back up. I chose the drive. Then that drive disappeared from the desktop and changed the disk name from "BACKUP" to "disk1s4" and is unreadable. Cannot get anything off the hard drive.
Any idea how I can read my data off my hard drive. I have 3+ years of pictures of my 2 kids and all my music. The rest I could take or leave. But I would be devastated to lose my pictures.
Please help
Thank you
Message was edited by: Jlk51496
Message was edited by: Jlk51496

Jlk51496 wrote:
When I got my computer back and plugged in my hard drive time machine came up asking if I wanted to restore a back up.
Hi, and welcome to the forums.
Do you mean this window?
or this one?
They are very different, obviously.
Try repairing the drive, per #A5 in [Time Machine - Troubleshooting|http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/Troubleshooting.html] (or use the link in *User Tips* at the top of this forum).
Why was your Mac seviced? What did they replace?

How do I recover data from my dead hard drive?

How do I recover data from my dead hard drive?

Is it dead or corrupt? There are recovery programs out there, however if your HD is head, paying pros to do data recovery is VERY costly. Some have removed the platters and installed them in likewise drives that dont have head crashes, but torque tolerances are tight, and doing it right is a bit advanced and tricky for most. Ive done HD disk swaps 4 times and had success 3 of the 4 times. It requires cannibalizing another working HD. In the future remember the golden rule, 2 copies is 1, and one is NONE.
Its likely you could find a local computer repair station that can do it for you cheaply. HD dont really "die", they have fried SATA bus, or crashed HEADS........the platters DO demagnatize over long time due to heat and degauss of the data (poor storage, etc).........but in specific, a HARD DRIVE DOESNT DIE ,.........only the flying head mechanisms that read and write the data, and SATA / bus that feeds the data DIES,.......but the data (unless corrupt or magnetically corrupted) is THERE

How is the TB Hard Drive replaced so that the new hard drive recognizes one user license applications

how is the 1TB Seagate Hard Drive replaced so that the new hard drive recognizes one user license applications

Based on a thread I started and others I've read, I would backup your System with a bootable clone to an external HD. After the new HD is installed, use the clone backup to restore your new HD. You can do this with Apps like Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper. That's what I plan on doing.

HT1386 My hard drive died and I need to resync my iPad. Will just following the initial instructions resync my iPad and restore all my information or do I need to try to recover the iPad file from the dead hard drive?

My hard drive died and I need to resync my Ipad. Will following the initial instructions for syncing work or do I need to restore my original files from the dead hard drive.

If the hard drive that crashed is the one that stored the itunes library, be sure to restore the library from Time Machine (mac) or whatever backup you use on windows. That will get back your music. I suspect that the replacement drive has an empty itunes library and thus, perhaps, the itunes match used that to sync to its servers.
Try posting in the iTunes Match forum, you'll probably find more knowledgeable folks there.
https://discussions.apple.com/community/itunes/itunes_match

Is it possible to have two USB drives for the IPad? I want to bring RAW photo files from my camera, through the IPad and back to an external hard drive. One of my cameras does not use an SD card. How can I do this?

Is it possible to have two USB drives for the IPad? I want to bring RAW files from my camera through the IPad and out to an external hard drive. One of my cameras has an SD card but the other one doesn't have a card that would fit in any of the camera devices I've seen on line. Realted to this, I bought the IPad camera accessory. Can I put the SD card in the device and also hook the external hard drive to the USB port of the accessory and download from the camera to the hard drive? Can I put Lightroom or the Nikon photo editing software on the IPad? Right now I carry a PC laptop and external hard drives with me on wildernes trips. Internet and WiFi are not available. Because I shoot so many photos and they're in RAW I need to download from the camera to the external drive because I run out of memory on the PC (and it has much more memory than the IPad). I have Nikon NX software and lightroom on my PC. I'd love to be able to reduce the weight I carry by using the IPad to edit my photos each night while on trips. Is this possible and how would I do it? I'd appreciate any guidance.

No, the camera connection kit only supports the copying of photos and videos to the Photos app, it doesn't support copying content off the iPad. For your second camera instead of the SD reader part of the kit, does the iPad to camera cable not work with it for direct transfer to the iPad ?
For Lightroom and Nikon software again no - you can only install apps that are available in the iTunes app store on your computer and the App Store app on the iPad, 'normal' PC and Mac (OS X) software are not compatible with the iPad (iOS). There are some apps that perform fairly basic editing functions that are available in the store, but nothing as sophisticated as, for example, Lightroom.

HT201250 I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

I have two external hard drives. One is my Time Machine backup drive. The other I use for external storage of files (documents, photos, movies, etc). Can I set Time Machine to backup BOTH my Mac hard drive and my other external hard drive?

Yes you can make multiple backups on one hard drive, for example if you’ve 1TB hard drive installed in your PC and you’ve two Mac Machines with 500GB drive each then you just make two backup images with size of 500GB each.
http://www.halfspot.com/use-your-pc-hard-drive-for-time-machine-backup/

Dead hard drive after one 1/2 years

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for